


Demise's Curse

by farrah_yondale



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cissexism, Father-Son Relationship, Ganondorf kicking Orientalism's ass, Gen, Gerudo Link, Impa and Ganon being BFFs, half-assed writing, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-03 19:17:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6622972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ganondorf is a reluctant villain. Zelda is a cursed princess. The Master Sword rejects Link. Sheik finds it all hilarious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which the Author Glorifies Petty Crime

Gerudo Desert's heat was hell, even for its natives.

Even for Link who wore loose linen tailored specifically for this horrendous mid-summer heat. He had been out in the all-too-eager sun for all of five minutes and he was quite certain it had already roasted another few layers of brown over his skin. Sweat was beginning to sting his eyes. He had half a mind to wipe it over with a red sleeve, only to remember that there weren't very many dry parts remaining on his clothes.

Even his sisters hunched there, beads of sweat dropping like dead locusts when father worked his magic. They had chosen scarves and drapes over their hair in the hopes that it might provide some relief.

And then there was his father who looked perfectly comfortable in far too many layers.

“What kind of Gerudo are you?” His father's voice had always stood out, much lower, much deeper, much louder than the shrill voices of his tribes-fellows. He pat the boy's back hard, laughing and then soothed a hand over as if to apologize for making his ribs vibrate in protest.

Ganondorf looked off at the wood-iron gate in the distance, the closest Hylian outpost to their home.

“This is a perfect day for looting.”

Link and his sisters laughed despite themselves.

“The six of you are coming of age today, so let's see which one of you impresses me!”

At the last word, one of the girls darted off towards the post.

“Hey, Naila, that's cheating!” Taqat called after her. She was the only Gerudo that shared the same mother as Link.

Ganon shrugged. “And Hylians call us cheats, too, don't they?” he laughed, grin wide over his face, clearly approving of Naila's methods. Hearing this, Naila turned back briefly to stick her tongue out at the older girl.

“I'll show you!”

Link ran with his fellow tribesfolk, kicking sand around his feet, blinking away the hot grains they flung at him.

By this time, one Hylian soldier or another should have noticed the rambunctious children and little redheads edging towards them. Fortunately, Ganondorf had knocked out the most troublesome sentries with a small incantation. Of course, he wouldn't take care of all of them. The game would be no fun that way.

As Link started to follow Taqat up one of the posts, he caught sight of a guard's helmet edging to where Naila was. Link had half a mind to warn her, but it was too late.

“Hey! Stop right there!”

“Good job, Naila!” Taqat goaded. “Try to be a little more obvious next time, why don't you!”

“Shut up!”

Link heard the sharp whip of wind and the twang of an arrow catching into wood. A narrow miss to his face.

“Ack!” his sister exclaimed, glancing up at the archer above them. “Quick, take this!” She dug out a handful of pebbles from her shirt pocket and shoved them into her brother's confused hands. “I can't throw from this angle.”

Link obliged his sister, and with one good fling, knocked the archer cleanly into unconsciousness.

“Nice!”

At the top, the siblings split up, Link going right, Taqat going left. On his way, he found that same hole he always loved sneaking around in, only the Hylian soldiers by this time had learned not to leave ladders around for the boy to access their valuables.

Still, the jump wasn't too steep, and even less of a drop if he managed to swing onto one of the crates. He floated down, light on his feet.

Link dropped into a crouch, and, hearing guards shouting along the hallway, stepped forward lightly. He surveyed the cache and slid towards the first interesting thing that caught his eye. Leather sticking out from behind a crate on the opposite end of the wall. (The guards had long since stopped storing all their valuables in the cubbies allotted to them after everything went missing for six straight Gerudo raids; Link was more shocked it had taken so long for them to finally decide that perhaps leaving such expensive items lying around wasn't a good idea)

The Gerudo tugged on the leather, till a bulging wallet was in his hands. He pulled on the strings, opening up the pouch to a variety of rupees, a few gold coins and a peculiar-looking crystal.

The crystal was what drew his attention. It was warm and glowed with a soft light. When he picked it up, it hummed softly in his palm, a small, beetle-sized cat purring against his skin.

“Not again!”

Link watched (with a slight look of pity) as a Hylian soldier skidded to a halt just on the other side of the threshold. He looked absolutely irate, and Link had just enough time to stuff the wallet into his tunic before nimbly avoiding a spear to the chest.

“Seriously?” the soldier snapped. (If Link remembered correctly, his name was Radolf from all the times he had been yelled at; Hylians had such weird names) “Why do you always manage to find my things?”

Not bothering to wait for an answer, Radolf tried to make a grab for the boy. Link jumped onto a crate, agile as a cat, then jumped out from where he came from.

When Link returned to the top of the sentry post, smiling to himself with a nice, fat wallet in his hands, he heard his sister shouting. She was perched at the top of a flag post, waving navy blue fabric back and forth.

“Do you think I could make a good dress out of this, father?” she yelled, to which her father and the others laughed.

The grin was wiped off her face when an arrow connected with her back, lightning flaring from its feathers. One of Link's sisters screamed. Taqat dropped forty feet below, the royal flag still clutched tightly in her grasp. Link closed his eyes and covered his ears, fearing the sound and sight of bones cracking.

But when he looked, his father stood there, daughter in his arms, black balls of non-light floating around him, like small, dark fireflies.

“It's time to leave,” Ganondorf ordered.

“No you don't.”

The only deep voice Link had ever heard was his father's. This voice was deeper, darker, rasping violently with centuries-old hatred in its cords. Link's nightmares began to revisit him in his wake, the earth wrenching open by hands made for despair. This voice wanted nothing but to corrupt.

Another arrow shot out from Goddess knew where, straight at the Gerudo leader, but it halted a foot from him, trapped in the magic wall he had cast.

“Everyone, run!” he shouted.

Thoroughly frightened, the Gerudo all slid down from ladders and banisters, rushing across the sand towards their home. None of them, except Link, looked back. He stood there, suddenly feeling like a traitor as he watched his father engage with the demon, Taqat still sound asleep in his arms. His father glanced back, noticing his son, and threw his arm to the side, the way he did before he magicked into nothingness.

“I thought I told you to run,” Ganon chided, appearing next to him. He tugged on his arm roughly. “Come,” he said, and Link felt the familiar suffocation accompanying teleportation.

*

“The rice has spoiled,” Link's mother tutted, looking down regretfully at all the wasted grains of rice. Link glanced in the sack and shuddered at the sight of unidentified insects crawling about in what had almost been his dinner.

“And you!” Hind snapped, turning to her daughter who was lumbering around despite her wounds. “Why do you always have to get injured the day of the ceremony? Sit down!”

“Link.” The boy turned at his father's voice, barely catching the gold coin he flipped into his hands. “Take someone with you to the market. We'll need enough for the whole tribe.”

“Four sacks of rice all gone to waste!” Hind sighed again, returning to the issue at hand.

Link stepped out into the hot sun and called Aberu’s attention. He had half a mind to keep the curtain parting the kitchen and the outside draped over his face, but his father began nudging at his back. Link moved out of the way and watched as Aberu kicked a ball one last time to a group of enthusiastic Gerudo.

“What, what?” she asked, sprinting to him. She wafted her face with the scarf around her neck.

Link lifted the empty sacks in his hands. Aberu nodded in understanding. If it had been anyone besides her or his sister, they might have prodded for at least a word or two. She grabbed his sleeve and started pulling him towards the series of colorful tents on the horizon.

They heard Ganon’s voice in the distance, reprimanding the children playing ball to watch where they were going.

“Aim for his head!” Aberu shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. Link could hear his father’s growl from all the way over here. Immediately, all of the girls started kicking the ball towards their tribe leader, and the result was a very broad-shouldered grown man running for his life as a group of eager, giggling children tried and succeeded to knock the ball into his head.

Link and Aberu spent the remainder of their walk flipping between laughter and concern for what Link’s father would do to their friends.

Once they reached the stands, however, Aberu’s mind went somewhere else completely.

“Ah, ah! They have those bracelets I’ve been looking for!” Her hand left Link’s, and she sped off somewhere where Link couldn’t follow. He sighed. In these moments, Link preferred his sister’s company over Aberu’s He needed someone to speak for him.

He edged over to one of the more familiar stands. The food was more expensive, but Link also knew no one would prod him for words.

“Ah, Link.” He recognized the easy voice of the stand owner. She was Chambali, like most people in this marketplace aside from the other various tribes in the desert, the occasional Hylian and less occasionally a bandit disguised as a Hylian. He had known her since he was a child.

“What would you like today?” Aqaab asked. “Rice?”

Link nodded.

“How many?”

Link held up four fingers.

“The boy doesn't speak?”

Link hadn't noticed the man, edged as far back in the shade as possible, maroon dress blending in with the wide tent sheet. His arms were crossed, and despite the relief of shade, he looked incredibly flushed and irritated.

“He’s shy,” Aqaab answered for him.

The man leaned forward. “Is it true you're the second Gerudo male born in a century?”

Before Aqaab could scold him for being nosy, she was interrupted by another unexpected voice.

“Stolen, more like, if you ask me,” someone snapped. “That's all they do, Gerudo. Steal. And now they're stealing babies, too.”

Link recognized this voice as well.

Banu reared her horse back, so that she pinned Link between the stand and the broad-shouldered mare she currently rode. She was Avarra, a tribe known for being bitter about most things but most recently for the fact that the Gerudo had two men, while they still had none.

“Stealing babies and then teaching them to steal,” Banu spat. “Remember the time you tried to take Nona, boy?”

If she was trying to use the abnormally large bull she called a horse to intimidate Link, she was failing. To her dismay, Nona quite liked the boy and took every opportunity to chew affectionately on his hair.

“If I recall correctly, Banu,” Aqaab snapped over a sack of rice. “The boy was all of eight and was merely playing with your horse. Don't be bitter just because Nona likes Link more than she likes you.”

Banu let out a snort, much more horse-like and irritated than one Nona could have mustered.

“Perhaps not stolen,” Banu ignored her and went on. “But Goddess knows what his mother did to get her child to look like that. He's as dark as us, but he _looks_ like a Hylian.”

With surprising speed, Link ducked under her horse and bolted towards one of the other stands.

“Link!” Aqaab called after him. But her voice faded away as he kept running. He kept running until all the tents were a safe distance away and he could cry without being seen.

Banu had a point, he thought. They always had a point or two. A second male was unheard of among the desert tribes, and for his hair to be bleached white blonde…all of that pointed to that word everyone called him, the one that was like teeth hitting metal. He despised that word, but it was more familiar to him than his own name.

Link pressed the sleeve of his tunic to his eyes, if only to alleviate the itch the tears caused.

A faint glow of light pulled him out of his thoughts. He glanced around and realized the source of light was coming from his shirt pocket. He frisked through the tunic, feeling for the gemstone he had snatched earlier from the Hylian soldier.

Link jumped back as the gem transformed into something that resembled a human.

“Greetings, Master.”

Link had no idea what he was looking at it. A figure about half his height, floating above his hand, colored in more shades of blue and violet than Link had ever known existed. Her eyes were glassy, her face sculpted with the delicacy of the finest woodwork.

The crystal, which he had mistakenly assumed was only that and not some sort of ethereal being, was fitted securely at the top of her sternum.

“Are you happy to see me again?”

Her robotic smile fell after a moment of silence.

“Master?” she asked again, flitting eagerly towards him.

He could feel anxiety creeping up his arms, hundreds of scorpions crawling and paralyzing his body. He suddenly couldn't breathe.

“Link!” The figure evaporated into light, folding and shrinking back into the crystal in a fraction of a second. “Link, there you are!” Aberu sprinted towards him, freshly bought bangles and rings of flowers in her hand. She bent over briefly to pant and then laid a free hand on his shoulder. “You look pale. Are you okay?”

The boy blinked at her. He nodded after a moment.

“Good,” she said with a pat. “Let's go. Aqaab packed all the rice for us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a horrible habit of starting fanfiction and never finishing it, so I decided to finish all of this one before posting anything. I hope the writing isn't too boring in this one (it gets better?) but this was meant to be short and then somehow....7 whole chapters. Amazing.
> 
> I also made an attempt at selective mutism, and unfortunately, due to the nature of this story I went with the Gerudo all being cis and assigning a gender at birth, so if I messed up in any way regarding those two things, please feel free to scream at me in the comments below.


	2. In Which Everyone Is Just Trying to Have a Good Time but Someone Feels the Need to Ruin It by Bringing Link’s Legitimacy into Question

It was surprising that not a single Hylian scholar had slithered his way into a Gerudo coming-of-age ceremony before. At least to Ganondorf who had lived a good portion of his life in Hyrule proper and endured some of the most asinine questions from ignorant people (“But if you’re not the father, then _where_ do the babies _come_ from?”). Hylians, who loved to send supposed anthropologists to study their relation to the desert tribes, had never bothered with this ceremony.

“Probably because they’d rather spend their Spring Equinox gossiping about the debauchery that goes on in my—” Hind gave her husband a good slap on the shoulder and hushed him.

“Your children are standing right there!” she scolded in a mortified whisper.

“Oh, come on, Ma,” Taqat, bandaged and looking like she needed a four hour nap, leaned on her brother as she huffed this. “As if people haven’t said weird comments to us.”

“Who?” Hind snapped, removing the slipper off her foot in one dexterous sweep.

It wouldn’t have been odd, then, that Ganon spared an inordinate amount of glances in the direction of a pale, obviously Hylian man in line with the Chambali tribe. He was a clear contrast against the black skin and white hair of their sibling tribe.

When Link had been younger, his parents regularly chided him for shying away from large gatherings. But they had long since learned that the reason Link didn’t speak to anyone outside his family was tied to his general aversion of large crowds. He spent most of his time hiding behind either of his parents and gripping them for dear life whenever they laughed or someone tried to speak to him.

Ganondorf was still generously distributing death glares in the direction of the Hylian. Link, on the other hand, had taken a curious interest in the foreigner and emerged from his hiding spot at the sound of his voice.

“Aqaab, you still haven’t explained to me what happens in this celebration.”

Link peeked from the curtain that was his father’s robes, adjusting only to hear better. He could see the merchant’s sour face, her hands fiddling with the flower bracelet on her wrist.

“And no, don’t give me another sarcastic response,” he added as she opened her mouth to speak. Aqaab bit her lip and plucked another few petals from her bracelet, dropping them into the sand.

“Listen Aqaab,” he said again after a few moments of Aqaab’s refusal to answer. “I’m on your side, for Goddess’s sake! I’m half-Gerudo!”

Link glanced up at Ganondorf, knowing full-well that he was also eavesdropping on their conversation.

Ganondorf glared down at his son, looking more like those ridiculously angry-looking statues of lions decomposing out in the desert than his father.

“Do you think I would allow _that_ anywhere near my family?” he said to his son. That should have sufficed as an answer, but Ganondorf wanted to complain more. “Imagine him harassing your mother with questions. She’d knock him out with a sandal within ten minutes of his arrival. Now that I think about it, it would be worse for him than for Hind.”

Link bit his lip and giggled at the image, not at all like the adult he was supposed to be tonight.

Aqaab groaned loudly and finally answered, “They have to shoot moldorms.” Ganon’s head snapped back up, his demeanor like that of a predator ready to pounce. “Their larvae come out at this time of year. Each person should get at least seven, but most usually get more. Once the larvae all return into the sand, we take whatever they’ve shot and cook them for a feast.”

But the half-Gerudo seemed largely unconcerned with what the desert tribes did with their moldorms after they died.

“Ah, so that’s why the moldorms don’t overpopulate.” This thought apparently consumed him, and he ceased from asking an endless list of questions. He folded his arms and held his head in his chin in the most scholarly-like contemplation.

Aqaab, finally free of this torment, trudged over to Ganondorf and smacked her face into his arm.

“Goddess help me!” she cried into his sleeve. “Why did I agree to do this?”

“I did warn Jaffer, though of course he replied with his usual assured smile and told me it wouldn’t be a problem. Speaking of which, why are you burying your face into me when you have a perfectly good tribe leader of your own to bother?”

“Someone in _your_ tribe is responsible for his existence, so as tribe leader, you must reap the consequences.” Aqaab dug her face back into his linen robe and pretended to blow her nose.

Ganondorf responded with a sigh and a begrudging head-pat.

“Speaking of the ceremony,” he went on, glancing down at his son who was still firmly attached to the end of his robes. “I think they’re about to start.” As if on cue, Link caught sight of two Gerudo dashing towards him.

Taqat pried him from out of his hiding spot.

“Link, come on!” His sister shouted this as if he had any choice, with her dragging his one arm and Aberu tugging the other.

“Good luck!” his father shouted after him. He glanced down, contemplating what to do with the baggage latched onto his sleeve.

As Link was shoved onto a horse, he glanced around to see who else was competing. There were the other five from his tribe, four from the Yonani, three from the Chambali and the last…

He couldn’t identify her with the veil and scarf covering everything but her eyes, but Link recognized her horse right away. It was Nona, and on her sat Banu, looking particularly vicious despite the drape in her way. She was the only contestant from the Avarra tribe.

As was customary, all the participants in the ceremony whispered to one another instead of listening to the speech explaining the rules. Link, not particularly being the type to talk, tried to listen, but with Taqat and Aberu muttering across to one another, it was difficult for him to make out the words. Finally, he gave up and settled for listening to whatever pointless conversation his tribesfolk felt the need to exchange.

“What’s Banu doing here?” Taqat asked. “I thought she was a year older than us.”

“Yeah, well,” Aberu muttered back, glancing up briefly to make sure they weren’t caught. “I guess she’s like you where she just gets injured or sick every year and can’t participate in the ceremony.”

Taqat replied with a frown.

Link shook his sister, eyes not leaving the referee. She was about to end her speech and begin the race.

He and his sisters gripped their bows in their hands.

“Good luck,” Aberu whispered to both of them.

With only the moonlight and the backlight of campfires, it was difficult to tell whether the wriggling he saw on the desert floor was a trick of the darkness or if it was the first sign of moldorm larvae burrowing up to the surface. His suspicions were confirmed with the shout of the Gerudo referee to start. Banu was the first to burst forward on her horse, drawing her string back and nailing her arrow dead center into one of the larvae.

Aberu whistled.

“We’ve got competition.”

As if to reply, Link slipped out an arrow from his quiver and let the string loose. Wood whistled through air and dug straight into another translucent creature, stopping the moldorm short of its journey.

His sisters nodded in approval, throwing a glance Banu’s way to see if she was watching. If she had seen the way Link shot his arrow, she was doing very hard not to make it noticeable, spurring her horse forward and focusing more on the large insects shuffling through the sand.

After another few minutes of tribesfolk shouting and shooting, the floor was teeming with white bodies thrashing around in the sand, some of which fell simply to horse’s hooves. At this point, it was impossible for anyone to have less than seven moldorms with their particular color of feathers sticking out of dead husks of insects.

Not including Taqat, of course.

“I only have six!” Link’s sister shouted in a panic.

“Come on, you can get one more!” Aberu and Link halted their mounts in an effort to support Taqat. Aberu was leaning forward, looking on with equal nervousness. Finally, after a few more attempts which left arrows pathetically in the dirt, one lodged into a moldorm.

“Yes!”Aberu exclaimed, urging her horse forward. Link could only grin widely.

At that moment, Link registered that something was flying at him instead of away from him. He turned to see the rare mother that burrowed out to protect her young, open-mouthed with a set of sharp teeth aimed at his throat.

Before Link could even plan anything, an arrow flew from his left, embedding straight into the moldorm and leaving it wriggling on the ground. It let out a weak cry and then stilled.

“You’re welcome,” came Banu’s voice, muffled by the scarf tied over her face.

As the Avarra shuffled her mount away, the number of moldorm larvae was beginning to dwindle. Some had buried back underground, while the strongest had made it across the horizon.

Link leaned back on his mount and sighed with relief. He had reached the seven-number mark early on in their race, but he would hate to see his father’s disappointed face if he hadn’t scored the highest out of all the contestants.

Taqat, along with most of the other tribesfolk, bounded off her steed and hustled over to the judge. Link dismounted slowly and loitered behind his horse, fearing too much excitement for his already frayed senses.

“Twenty!” Link heard his father’s shout, and before he could even register what was happening, he was thrown into the air, gripping Ganondorf’s shoulders to keep from falling. He was bombarded with a series of bearded kisses on his cheek, scrunching up his face in reply and whining. Ganondorf, feeling the resistance, finally gave up and set his child down.

“That’s two more than the person who came in second—Banu,” he answered to Link’s head tilt. “Good job!”

Link looked up at his father and smiled.

With the excitement dying down, Link thought it was safe to approach the group of young tribesfolk gathered around the judge, arguing about what counted and what didn’t.

“Hey, Nabooru, you forgot to count this one.” Aberu pointed to the adult moldorm Banu had shot.

“No, adults don’t count,” Nabooru answered over other screaming Gerudo.

“That’s not right!” Taqat snapped. “Banu basically saved my brother’s life!”

Nabooru ignored her and addressed the other complaints everyone else had for her.

Link slipped through various tribesfolk and pulled on Nabooru’s tunic.

“What?” she snapped.

Link continued tugging and pointed to the moldorm. He shook his head and then held up two fingers.

“He wants it to count as two points,” Taqat interpreted.

“Two? Yeah? Why not three then, or four? Why do you want to lose so bad, kid? Stop bothering me and enjoy the feast with everyone else.”

“He wants them to tie. It’s only fair.”

Nabooru pulled her mouth into a frown. Link stared at her.

“Fine,” she finally conceded, pulling away from his gaze.

*

“Watching Mama dance is probably the worst torture I have ever had to endure on this earth.”

Link had to agree silently. He huddled closer to Taqat, preferring the warmth of his sister over the fire. She turned to her father and interrupted his incredibly important conversation with the Yonani tribe’s leader.

“Baba, why did you marry her?”

Amira looked vaguely annoyed that someone would dare interrupt a heated debate regarding what prayers to the Goddess were obligatory and what weren’t. Taqat didn’t care and just kept calling her father’s attention. He continued to ignore her.

“She’s not even _drunk_ , and she’s so embarrassing,” Taqat sighed to her brother after twelve repeated attempts to call her father. “Someone please stop her.”

Link dared to glance in the direction of where he had last seen his mother. A sash was tied around her head now. Link thought he had seen enough and returned back to his comfortable position on his sister. In that time, Banu had slipped beside the two of them.

“That’s incredibly embarrassing,” she greeted, glancing at Hind.

“Finally, something we can agree on,” Taqat replied back.

“I’m sure we can also both agree that my behavior this morning was out of line. I’m sorry Link. And thank you for showing me generosity during the moldorm count despite my poor attitude.”

“Hm, well, I suppose we can forgive you,” Taqat mused. “But only if you fork over four hundred rupees.”

“Very funny. We’re supposed to be adults now,” Banu reminded her, returning to her feet.

“Link!” Ganondorf shouted, finally having concluded his debate apparently. “You haven’t finished your moldorms!”

“There’s twenty, Baba!” Taqat protested for him. “How do you expect someone so small to eat so much?”

Link frowned at being called small.

“Well, that’s why you’re so small!” It was amazing how neither of Link’s parents ever needed wine to pass their lips in order for them to be embarrassing in front of crowds. “My son is not allowed to be this small!”

A few people listening laughed into their drinks.

“Is he really his son, though?”

Music was still playing in the distance, but Link could feel a surrounding silence hush over them. Those who had laughed into their wine or water were suddenly more absorbed with their cups than anything having to do with Ganondorf.

“Keep your mouth shut, Khajora, or I’ll shut it for you.” Link didn’t recognize the Yonani but apparently Ganondorf did. She squinted at the Gerudo in reply.

“Is that what you did to the boy, Ganondorf? Rip his tongue out so he couldn’t reveal the truth about his unfaithful mother—”

A spark of magic flew from Ganon’s fingertips, hitting the woman square in the chest. She crumpled over, almost falling into the fire. A few people gasped, either moving out of the way or moving towards her to catch her.

His father was tense next to him.

“Ganondorf!” The only person courageous enough to challenge his father’s temper was his mother. Hind grabbed her husband by the arm, dragging him away from the fire and motioned for her children to follow. They exchanged stricken glances and hurried to their feet.

“Are you stupid?” Hind asked when they were safely inside.

“Not as stupid as you if you considered that shameless display dancing.”

Link and Taqat’s shocked looks melted into giggles at this. Hind hushed them with a glare.

“It’s not funny,” she snapped. “Ganon, did you need to almost kill someone over this? And how many times have I told you not to use magic?”

“Why?” her husband snapped back.

“Yeah, Mama, why?” Taqat dared to interrupt. “How many times have I told you not to use magic,” was a common phrase in their household. But neither sibling knew why.

Hind could only tighten her lips together and glare at her husband.

“Fine,” Ganondorf finally grunted. “Fine, I’m sorry. I lost my temper. It’s not like I did it specifically because…”

“I know,” Hind conceded with a sigh, remembering how many bruises she had left on people who questioned her faithfulness. “We just don’t know what could happen.”

Both siblings glanced back and forth between their parents, awaiting some sort of explanation after all these years of questioning looks. Their parents did not indulge them.

“Sit down,” Hind urged her husband. He complied, taking a seat against the cushions lining the wall. “I’ll make tea.”

Link, in the company of only his family and on his own couch, finally relaxed his shoulders and sighed. His father smiled.

“I always make things worse for you, don’t I?”

Link shook his head. Ganondorf didn’t reply, and instead graciously received tea from his wife’s hands. Hind took the seat beside Ganondorf.

“Baba, what was that thing?” Link finally asked, in obvious reference to the demon that had attacked them earlier.

His father's grip over the teacup tightened. Link's breath caught. His father rarely became angry at his own children, but when he did, it was a storm Link and his sister had to find shelter from, which usually ended up being their mother.

“I...” he began, unsure. “It was the queen of Hyrule.”

“What?” Hind leaned forward, trying to see her husband's face. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. I mean...it was the queen. But it wasn't at the same time.”

“Well, that's cryptic,” his mother replied, folding her arms. “Still, the queen has been missing for years. It could be possible. But what would she be doing in an insignificant place like this?”

“I said it was her and not her at the same time,” Ganon reminded her. “It was her body, but I don't think it was her soul.”

“That sounds like a frightening monster.”

The way his mother said it made Link shudder.

*

The queen of Hyrule sighed at the hum against her palms.

The Master Sword was safe, she was relieved to note, so there was still time to keep it that way.

She ignored the ragged gasping on the floor of the temple. She ignored the fact that the writhing mass of the darkest of demons had somehow barged its way into a holy place. She ignored this, and focused her attention on reuniting this sword with its proper wielder.

The spell was a simple one, but a bit difficult to actually perform given that the object of her attention had powerful magical qualities. A bit like opening the lid of a tightly wound jar, easy enough in some cases, but requiring a great deal of physical effort in others. With a final wrench, the jewel locked in the center of the Master Sword popped out, floating and vulnerable in front of the queen.

The demon on her right roared in excitement, extending its strange, melting semblance of arms out towards the blue-violet gem.

“To the Hero, Fi,” she whispered into the gemstone. At the queen's command, the jewel shot forward out of her hand like an arrow launched into the dark of the temple entrance. A demon could not corrupt a sword without its spirit.

The mass screeched with protest. The queen, occupied with the direction the crystal was headed, paid no attention to its tantrum.

Until she felt a sharp slap against her wrists and turned. Black tendrils of sludge had wrapped their way around her body, digging into her skin, burning the flesh, as if the sludge were made up of some hazardous chemical and not an extra-corporeal thousand year old demon. Automatically, she resisted, though in the back of her mind, she had an idea of where this struggle was headed.

Somehow, she managed to free her right hand, the grip of the demon snapping off like a rubber band. The rest of her followed suit. As she stumbled, gravity aided her escape, and she was free from the mass of rage behind her.

Only now she was on the floor, which was a much less convenient position for escaping. A moment later, she was swallowed up whole by the monster.


	3. In Which Hind Demonstrates Extreme Skill by Being Near Death but Still Managing to Lecture Her Children

Impa swiveled around to the withered, gray form of Queen Zelda. The markings throbbing and pulsating over her face from black to dull gray were all too familiar to the Sheikah.

“Zelda, you're—”

It would be foolish to deny that something had happened. Something had obviously happened.

And hiding something from Impa was pointless. Impa resembled a hawk in more ways than just the countless number of scars over her face and the hooked nose that loved to bury itself into other people's business. Her eyes, despite being the deepest shade of maroon-brown, shined with an inhuman alertness.

“Two things, Impa.”

Zelda heaved shallow and slow, careful not to exacerbate the sharp pain running down her chest.

“One, I need you to take over for me as regent.” She could see Impa’s lips part slightly at these words.  “Two, I need you to hide me away. Wipe my memory. Change me. _Please_.” The last word was a desperate gasp.

Zelda reeled, hand clutched over her abdomen. Impa caught her halfway.

“I wasn't sure if I'd make it through all those sentences,” the queen's huff was almost a laugh. “Impa, if you must know...I've been possessed.”

“By what?” she hissed, as if the fire between her teeth might ward off whatever was possessing her.

“Old magic...only yours is older...I need you to fool this demon. Help me, please.”

“I don’t see why you can’t just tell me what it is.”

“You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure. But I can’t hold this back much longer. Please help me.”

Seeing the desperate look in the woman’s eyes, Impa pressed her no further.

*

Ink jetted out from the sand, pooling and spilling like a new source of water. It curled and filled the spot of earth it spurt from, forming a small lake of sludge, growing faster than a fountain of that size could ever possibly hope to fill.

Link knew it was magic, and Link knew that same magic was what kept him from moving.

He tried to kick his leg forward, but it was as immobile as a leg caught in quicksand. He stared and watched as the murky water shot up like a firework to the level of his face, submerging him within a second.

He couldn’t breathe.

He assumed it was because he was drowning.

Until he felt his lungs collapse under a sinking weight and opened his eyes. Above him hung a curtain of darkness, a body of obsidian burning off molten lava. Its hand was thicker and darker than his father’s and wrapped tightly around his throat, threatening to crush the cartilage that held his airway patent. He figured a creature that large could have done just as an efficient job with its fingers rather than wasting the effort to grasp a whole hand around his neck.

Why was he thinking this instead of trying to escape?

*

When Ganondorf found a patch of whitish-yellow grass amidst the desert sand, he knew he had found exactly what he was looking for. Urging his camel forward, he stopped right at the tuft of wheat, jumped off the animal, grabbed the tuft by its roots and yanked, _hard_.

He unearthed his son, who was screeching and protesting as his hair was pulled. But his father didn't stop until his feet were safely above the sand. 

Link sat there, cross-legged and apparently un-bothered by the fact that he had almost drowned in sand. He rubbed a hand over his head, trying to soothe the burn of torn hair.

“Sorry,” Ganon said, watching his son ruffle his own hair. Link shook his head.

Instead he replied, “I had another nightmare, Baba.”

“About what?”

“Something was trying to choke me,” Link described. “Something...big and scary and...evil.”

“That sounds so very specific. It could be me you're talking about.” Ganon almost laughed.

Link had half a mind not to say it, but being just woken up from sleep made his tongue loose. “It did remind me of you, actually,” he admitted. The boy, more occupied with removing dirt from between his toes, didn't notice his father’s hands twitch at these words.

“You're having nightmares about suffocation because you were almost suffocated by sand in your sleep.” His father's tone was curt. Ganondorf stood and clicked his tongue, so that the camel would sit down. “Now, get on.”

Link opened his mouth to protest and then thought against it. It seemed his father was in too sour of a mood to be receptive to anything he said. He stood, and after a glance at his father, clambered onto the dromedary. He shifted in his seat as his father took the place behind him.

“And how many times have I told you not to nap out in the desert, huh?” Ganon chided.

Link let that question hang in the humid air. There really wasn't any good response to that.

Father and son rode on in silence, Link too frightened to utter anything in case his father’s temper was ignited. Instead, Link tried to focus on the hair lining their camel’s neck or the way the sand moved around Ghab’s hooves as she sauntered forward. Occasionally, however, he would glance back at his father to see if that irritated look was still painted over his face and was disappointed each time to find that it was.

“What?” his father would grunt. Link would only press his lips together in reply and then turn his head back and start counting hairs again.

As they approached the outline of their home, Link caught the faintest glitter of something gliding across the sand, the shadow of a large animal slinking along the desert. At first, Link harkened the shadow to be one of the many leevers that sometimes ate his shoes, but he had never seen one so large.

Ganondorf, however, seemed more preoccupied with being angry than something attacking their family. Link pointed.

“What?” Ganon grunted again. He looked up, and all traces of anger were wiped from his face. (Link would have been relieved if it weren’t for the possibility of their home being torn to pieces.)

“Goddess,” he muttered. He urged Ghab into a trot and cast a spell that sent sand flying up in front of the creature. The creature hissed and drew back, and Link immediately recognized it as the one who had attacked his sister earlier.

“Get inside!” Link flinched at the low note in his father’s voice, strangely remnant of his nightmare. But he complied, bounding off the calm animal (Ghab had always been an oddball when it came to fear; she rarely ever startled at things that probably would kill her, but then trotted off frantically at silly pranks; as such, Link knew that her being completely at ease was a horrible sign).

He met his sister at the threshold of their home. Hind appeared from behind the curtain and joined her husband nearer the monster.

Hind snapped her fingers and the geometric signature of her magic appeared, forming a barrier of iridescent foliage and petals interlacing into diamonds. By this time, most Gerudo had gotten the message and those lacking magical prowess retreated into their homes. Those with slight magical talent whispered an incantation or two to strengthen the barrier and then followed their magic-less sisters behind wooden doors.

The wall took a relentless pounding of hammer arms from the beast with only a slight crack in one of its corners. Hind resealed it with a word.

Link could see his mother’s forehead glistening from the stress of such powerful magic.

So could his father.

“No,” his wife hissed, digging her nails into his forearm. He had opened his mouth to assist her. “Don’t make me fight you _and_ the monster.”

The threat of that sentence was enough to make his mouth shut.

“Why isn’t she letting Baba help her?” Taqat whispered to her brother.

Three more cracks appeared in the barrier. Hind shut all of them.

Four more. Hind sealed them all again.

Six more. Hind tried to seal them, but only managed half before collapsing in the sand.

“Hind!” Link heard his father shout, but he was less focused on his mother and more on his sister, who currently held a mulberry ball of magic in her hands.

“Taqat! You’re not supposed to use magic!”

She ignored her brother and whispered a few more words to the collection of condensed mist over her palms. An amateur network of circles and crescents shot out, overlaying the beautiful craftwork of her mother.

“Taqat!” Wiped of magic and half-dead on the floor, their mother still had the energy to scold them.

But before she could, the barrier shattered.

*

Link could make it rain.

He had no evidence to support this, but he was quite sure.

Link rarely ever longed for rain; he enjoyed splashing in it as much as any other Gerudo child, but the sun and heat—despite being incredibly oppressive at times—was familiar to him. Rain made the air thin and wet and slimy, and sometimes patches of sand would become traps sending an unsteady foot sliding and flying into the air. Which was funny if it was his father who stepped and slipped in it, but usually his sister would shove him into a puddle, and Ganondorf would get to laugh at him.

But whenever Link wanted it to rain, it did.

When it rained in the desert, it poured. The skies would turn from their usual dusky blue to grey in a matter of minutes, water running down as if the Goddess had neglected to water her dried up plant in a year and dumped buckets of water in an attempt to rejuvenate the barren land.

Link, mostly to upset his father, would run out at the slightest impending drop of rain and properly ruin whatever he was wearing that day. (Another reason why he knew he could control the weather, since every single rainfall in his life had coincided with him wearing a pair of tunic and trousers his father had stitched for him.)

“I like your tunics, Baba,” Taqat had assured when Ganondorf frowned at this. She lifted the bottom of her long shirt parallel to the ground so that she might admire the embroidery on it more easily. “But I’m going to ruin it, anyway!” And then darted out after her tittering brother into the downpour.

There had been only one occasion where Link regretted doing this.

“Look,” Taqat giggled, flicking her fingers. Water droplets sprayed red, as if sparks from a fire. They landed into the wet sand, dark and dead as coal. Link knew water couldn’t die, but there was something about what Taqat had done that felt like stepping on a bug or shooting a stray animal.

“Stop it.” Link’s voice quavered. “That’s weird.”

“Oh, come on. You never want to have any fun.” She continued on, ignoring the discomfort of her brother. Another few cocoons landed in the mud.

“It’s weird!” the boy whined over the rain, voice cracking. “Stop!”

She was laughing.

And then she coughed out something, hard and black and raw onto the husks of rainwater shells. She gasped, as if something was hindering her breathing and pressed her chest, wheezing and red. She collapsed into the mud, body racking from a fit of coughs.

“Mama!” Link screeched. Within moments, their parents rushed out from behind the doorway. Seeing Taqat shivering on the floor, Hind collapsed next to her daughter, disregarding the soaked earth her knees splashed in and rested her daughter in her lap. She glanced up once at Ganon and gave him a strange look Link had never come to understand.

*

Fury swept through their home like an unexpected sandstorm. Link thought his father might be generating enough heat off him to evaporate the rain. He had never seen Ganondorf so angry before.

“You were supposed to make sure something like this didn’t happen!”

Link’s grandmothers were as ancient as the adobes that housed the Gerudo. Koume was tall, thin and ailing; Kotake was wider than she was tall, hair white but still thick with youth, while her sister’s was fiery-red but wispy.

Kotake lifted a wrinkled hand, skin bunched together like the folds of a prune, urging her son to reign in his temper.

“I will not calm myself, Mother!” he snapped. His fingers itched to wrap themselves in someone’s collar and shake violently until his rage was quelled. 

Link had shrunken behind the threshold, too quiet for his father to notice when all his attention was occupied with screaming at his mothers.

“My children will not suffer the same fate I did! You are to make sure of that! Get it out of her, _now._ ”


	4. In Which Ganondorf Makes a Bitter Remark Which May or May Not Reflect the Author's Annoyance with the Way the Gerudo are Typically Depicted

Princess Zelda was bleeding.

Which was a definite cause for hysteria, apparently.

Impa watched in deep anguish as some nursemaid or the other screamed about “what a travesty to befall the princess” and “how it must have hurt so much” despite the fact that Zelda was sitting calmly and staring at her own bloodied hand with fascination. It was almost amusing. To watch women run frantically about the room while the child they worried so unnecessarily over sat undisturbed at the center of their outburst.

While these unnamed women cried over this tragedy, Impa stalked over to the princess, scooped her up and took her somewhere decidedly quieter.

“Ouch,” Zelda said, lifting a red hand at the Sheikah. “Ouch,” she said again, apparently trying to discern whether this was the correct response to injury.

“Yes,” Impa assured. “Ouch.”

Zelda giggled at her guardian’s approval and tried to stick the hand in her mouth. Impa slapped her fingers, only sharp enough to deter the princess from doing so.

Impa clicked her tongue. “Bad child,” she chided.

Zelda giggled again.

Impa took the moment where the princess was more occupied with chewing her guardian’s hair instead of her own fingers to pull a salve and a handkerchief from her sash. She unfolded the fabric and wiped Zelda’s hand clean. Her eyes were protesting this action, as if the princess of Hyrule enjoyed nothing more than the sight of blood.

Impa wondered who in the world she could have gotten that from.

Still, it did little for her to dwell on which of her parents Zelda had inherited her thirst for blood from. She pressed the yellow-orange paste onto the toddler’s hand, more forcefully than the maids might have allowed.

“Ow! Ow!” Unlike other children, Zelda rarely ever burst into tears when her wounds burned. Instead, she would let out small protests, bounce up and down and then settle down after a few minutes and giggle.

Really, Impa worried for the princess sometimes.

*

Gerudo Desert was a wide, expansive wasteland in some places, booming and brimming with activity in others. It was constantly changing. People migrating from one area to the next, old temples destroyed after years of sandstorms and neglect, places that were once empty now covered with marketplaces.

The tower of weathered bricks Sheik swung his legs over was a remnant of such temples. To what Goddess or for what rituals, the young man had entirely no idea. Nor did he care.

What he _did_ care about was this sun-beaten boy who had just narrowly escaped death for a second time. Sheik was properly acquainted with the killer. Acquainted enough to know that the killer wasn't so far off from where they were now.

Now was the problem of actually getting him out of here. Somewhere where the boy could just _not almost die_ for once in all his lives.

The Sheikah tugged on the boy's collar, dragging him along in the sand like a sack of rice, clearly unconcerned of leaving a large, winding trail behind him. _That thing_ didn't even rely on its eyes to find its target. What did it matter?

He dragged the boy for quite a long time. So long, one might ask themselves if there weren't some more efficient ways for Sheik to obtain his goal.

There probably were, but Sheik couldn't really bother himself with them.

Leaving him lying around in Hyrule Field would probably increase his chances of survival. He could probably also urge a wagon or carriage along to conveniently pick up the boy and hopefully keep him out of trouble.

By sunset the slight rise of dunes on the horizon began to change into patches of green. Hyrule Castle and the mountains surrounding it appeared as Sheik could feel his feet become more and more steady as the earth beneath him changed.

For the last few hours, the young man had felt the smallest tugging on the back of his mind, as if something were desperately trying to escape the confines of his skull. He hadn't let it, and he wouldn’t, not until he knew the boy was in a safe place.

Catching sight of the familiar castle in the distance, he sighed to himself, “Oh, good.” His voice rasped into two, one his normal low hiss, the other higher in pitch and much smoother. The spell on him was beginning to unravel.

Sheik dumped the unconscious child on the side of a road leading to Hyrule Castle Town. With any luck, some passerbys would find the boy and take him home. Goddess knew it would be more dangerous for Sheik to remain by him than to leave him completely alone.

 

*

Impa sniffed. It was incredibly embarrassing for her to admit that, despite all the nobility and important figureheads she had eluded and assassinated in all her life, pollen was still a potent adversary. She had woken up with mucus gluing her eyes shut every spring for the last four decades, and each time, she had to listen to her charge bubble theories about how this happened to the Sheikah because she had never suffered parasites as a child. (Not for the last three years, however, which was somewhat of a solace in this regard. In all other regards, Zelda's absence was definitely was not a solace. She was a Sheikah, for Goddess's sake. She wasn't supposed to lead a country, at least not with people watching her)

“Lady Impa, a letter for you.”

Impa responded with a sneeze. A good thing for the soldier crouched there, because if it weren't for her nose, she might have responded with something more sarcastic. Namely, the fact that she despised being called “Lady”. It made her seem...dignified.

Impa snatched the parchment as rudely as she could manage. She had been trying to offend everyone as much as she could in her last few years as regent. But it hadn't worked. Clearly, the collective respect for an old Sheikah woman was so wired into every Hylian that even with all the rude comments she made, they were still ready to lay their lives down for her. If anything, they had only become more afraid of her.

Before reading the note, she checked the signature. Hastily scribbled at the bottom of the page read “Ganondorf”. Impa chewed the inside of her cheek and steeled herself for awful grammar. (As learned as the Gerudo was—Impa would never _dare_ insult the man's intellect—he was notably horrible at writing in Hylian)

“To my dearest friend, I'm sure you'll find this humble piece of parchment folded away in some soldier's coat pocket, left deliberately there by one of my daughters ( _not_ biological might I add, since all your soldiers are oh-so very nosy and love to inquire about the number of wives I have; the answer is one; the answer is always one; please paint this over your castle walls so I shan't be bothered by such irksome questions; really, Impa, I thought you were more capable than this).

Whatever this demon is, I demand you share all your knowledge with me at the soonest possible date. It was responsible for almost killing one of my daughters the other day and I deem it pertinent to rid the world of such filth at once.

As such, I have already taken measures to arrive at your palace. This letter is one of the rare occasions where I have decided to extend mercy and warn you before my arrival. I shall see you the evening of the waxing quarter (that is the soonest possible date mentioned in the previous paragraph).”

Aside from the occasional spelling errors, a rather enjoyable read, Impa concluded.

Then again the actual implications of the letter were more of a headache than a joy. The Sheikah pressed long fingers over her temples. Ganondorf was _so_ annoying.

If he hadn't been an old friend, Impa probably would have had him executed for being the most annoying creature in this realm. That, of course, did not include creatures in other realms, who were far more annoying. Which, now that she thought about it, was somewhat comforting to her. At least he wasn't _that_ annoying.

Still.

She tucked the letter into a sleeve. There wasn’t much she could do besides graciously accept His Royal Gerudo Highness’s offer. She snapped tattooed fingers, and parchment zapped into existence in front of her. She needed no ink when she had magic.

_All right, you buffoon._

That should have sufficed. She folded the letter in half, then quarters, then finally, with a slight bit of difficulty—she was getting old—she folded it into eighths. The small square of paper rested between her fingertips. She blew onto it, and the paper disintegrated into fine powder.

*

Yesterday, Link had woken up with sand in his face.

Today, it was some foreign substance, prickly and itchy and much larger in size than the grains that covered Gerudo Desert.

Link sat up bewildered, snorting leaves and mud out of his face.

A ball of light swirled out from the boy’s tunic pocket, shaping into the blue-violet being he had met at the marketplace. She floated as she did before, sleeves long and shimmery in the morning light.

“Ah, Master we have gotten closer to our destination. Forgive me for not being able to aid you earlier. I am not of much use without your sword.”

Link had a long series of questions running in his head, but he didn’t want to open his mouth and actually ask them. He decided it was probably better to keep silent.

“Unfortunately, without the sword, we will also not be able to use your dousing abilities. However, if my calculations are correct, I believe the sword is housed near the royal family’s castle in what was once the Temple of Hylia. If you continue in the direction of the castle on the horizon, I am sure we will find your sword.”

This stream of sentences only furthered added to his list of questions. Link decided it was definitely better to keep silent.

With that, the being reformed into an amorphous mass of white and disappeared into his tunic.

Having no real choice—considering he had absolutely no idea where on earth he was—Link followed in the direction of the castle that stood on the horizon. He recognized it, if his father’s stories were anything to go by.

“Hyrule Castle,” his father had once told him. “The ceilings are high, the rooms are wide, like the Spirit Temple. But our temple is merely the size of one hallway in the castle. They hang banners from long spiral columns and the floors are pristine and polished like the suits of armor lining the rooms. What a waste of money. They deserve to be stolen from.” Link and Taqat, awestruck and expecting a much grander conclusion to Ganondorf’s story, were disappointed to hear their father’s cynicism. Their bright eyes dimmed like a candle snuffed, both of them regarding their father with sour looks.

“What?”

Link almost laughed at the memory.

He regretted that his last conversation with his father had been unpleasant.

“Master, is…something bothering you?”

The being had not appeared in her usual flash of light this time. She spoke as if she had been floating behind him the entire time. Her question, if tinged with a hint of emotion, was too robotic for the boy to accept as genuine concern.

She repeated her question. Link only stared.

“Master, do you not remember who I am?”

Link shrugged, not sure how else to convey his utter confusion at this spirit’s existence.

“I am Fi, the instrument of the Goddess, sent to aid the first incarnation of the Chosen Hero. In a past incarnation, you and I journeyed across the land to forge your sword into a worthy weapon. We defeated the Demon King Demise and prevented him from seizing the Triforce.”

That all sounded incredibly exciting, but Link never recalled doing such a thing in his life.

She circled around him, fluttering in the direction in which she had indicated Link toward.

At this point, Fi seemed to have realized that no amount of conversation could pry words out of Link’s mouth and finally settled to making comments that needed no reply or just plainly remaining silent.

*

Impa was roused from a dreamless sleep by the sharp rap of knuckles on the door. Disoriented, she dragged a heavy skull from off the desk, pressing her fingers half-heartedly to the indents the books and things made over her face. She blinked a few times and remembered she had dozed off in the palace study.

“I’m napping.”

Without pausing to show any consideration for this sentence, whoever it was turned the knob and popped his head through. “My lady, my most radiant queen, I come with great news.” He made an exaggerated bow, grin apparent even through the dark band of cloth running along his face.

“Sheik,” Impa hissed, drowsiness all but evaporated. “Tell me you have something useful to say instead of the awful poetry you love to recite.”

“I—” He genuinely seemed to respect Impa’s wishes for once, but before he could even begin, he slammed a hand down on the table, bending forward. “Help.” Drops of sweat like dew formed over his forehead, grapes bursting from a vine.

His knees buckled and he repeated in a much softer voice, “Help.”

Impa sprung from her chair and cushioned his fall with outstretched arms. By the time he collapsed into her lap, his hair had been undone and his Sheikah garments replaced with a Hylian dress.

“Impa,” the queen sighed.

Impa bit her lip to keep herself from uttering the queen’s name. Eyes that had been harsh and judgmental towards Sheik melted to gentle and forgiving towards her charge. Without replying or waiting for her to continue, Impa pressed her first two fingers to the queen’s forehead. The sweating and shaking stopped as a dark glow erupted from her fingertips.

The queen’s hair twisted and swirled back into a braid. Her face, once slick with sweat now clear and shaped with higher cheekbones and a wider jaw. Despite the cessation of rapid breathing, she was still unconscious.

Impa laid the queen over her lap and could only hope she would wake up as Sheik.


	5. In Which Ganondorf Attempts to Murder Impa

Koume screeched.

“Not again!” she cried, trembling, frail hands over her face. “Not again!” Her voice was hardly audible with the baby screaming and kicking in Kotake's arms, as if it protested being torn out of its mother.

Kotake bounced the baby slightly in her pudgy hands. “It's all right, Koume,” she soothed, not entirely sure who she was trying to calm down.

“It's not all right!” her sister screeched again. “Don't you see? It's the same signs our ancestors saw. Born under a full moon, under the same constellations, his mother dying during childbirth! She even gave him the same name!” Koume buried wafer-thin fingers into flaming red hair. “Ganondorf!”

The infant squirmed harder at the mention of his name.

“Stupid woman, uneducated woman!” her sister rambled. “Of all things...she liked the name but didn't read its history. Uneducated woman!”

Finally at the end of her patience, Kotake snapped, “And what do you want us to do? Kill him? Throw him out in the desert?”

Koume had opened her mouth to answer at the end of the first question. She snapped it shut by the end of the second.

“We will raise him,” Kotake answered decisively. “With the name his mother gave him. And we will use every ounce of our magic to remove this curse. Now stop being hysterical and help me find this child a wet nurse.”

*

“Impa.”

A fifteen-year old Impa looked up at the mention of her name. She had previously been occupied by a Sheikah incantation scrawled in the margins of an ancient tome her mother had lent her. So occupied, in fact, that she completely ignored the first four mentions of her name and only looked up when her name was accompanied with the hand of an eight-year old boy inches from her face.

Impa blinked a few times, trying to remove the white haze that marred her vision. It was a futile attempt, she finally decided and focused instead on the hand of the Gerudo boy she had been assigned to look after.

It was a dark brown, like hers, although admittedly, his hadn't seen the sun so often lately. What concerned her more, however, was the pattern of lines running down his forearm, all at perfect right angles like a maze drawn in the sand. They pulsed every so often, the gentle glow of fireflies lighting up with every other breath.

Impa stood immediately, chair screeching on the hard stone. Ganondorf flinched as she grabbed his arm.

“It shouldn't spread this fast,” she said, turning his hand over. “What have you been doing?” It was the first time Impa really looked at him that day.

“Nothing,” the boy lied, snatching his hand back.

“You've been using dark magic, haven't you?” Impa dropped to a crouch, at his level. “I told you, you can't! Ganon!” she snapped. The Gerudo frowned and turned his head. She shook him in response. “Ganon, using magic only makes it stronger! Why have you been using magic?”

She squeezed his shoulders, a sign that she would not let go until he gave her a reply.

“It makes people stop,” he answered quietly.

“Stop what?”

Ganondorf regarded her with yellow eyes, oddly ancient and solemn like an old sage's. After a pause, he answered, “It makes people stop hurting me.”

*

The trip from the Gerudo tribe’s outpost to Hyrule Castle would have normally taken at least two weeks with the fastest of horses and most cooperative weather. Ganondorf, however, had enough magic and stubbornness in him to cut this trip in half on normal occasions. On ones where he felt a particularly strong bloodlust for Impa, he managed to cut out an extra three days from this journey, and today, he had a strong inkling that everything that was happening to him was somehow all her fault. So he arrived at the palace entrance four days after the attack on his family.

Ganondorf was welcomed into Hyrule with the usual greeting.

“Is it true the Gerudo don't have sex?”

Ganon's response to this—the proper response to this—was to very casually backhand the fellow who said this, as unconcerned as if he were swatting away a particularly bothersome fly. With a sharp _thwack_ , the Hylian dropped to the floor about as gracefully as a lamp that had been knocked over.

“I don't see why that should concern you,” Ganondorf answered, stepping over the limp body.

“As always, you display an enormous penchant for violence.”

The queen had arrived. Or rather, the regent, though she certainly displayed all the airs necessary for a queen. Impa stopped a respectable distance from him and regarded him with a slight grin.

“Me, violent? Never.” Ganon did something with his eyelashes that Impa assumed must have been a flutter but dearly hoped wasn't. The Gerudo, on the other hand, was ecstatic to note that his fluttering imitation had completely wiped the smirk off her face.

“You look absolutely dashing in that cape,” he added.

Impa, used to unfair amounts of positive attention, ignored his compliment.

“That letter of yours was quite a read,” she said, her smile returning. “If you really want to know why I never bother to douse the rumors about your love life, it's because you become so eloquent when you're irritable. How could I pass up such a chance to hear your poetry?”

Ganondorf's only retort was a sour look.

“I'm surprised, though,” Impa continued, her voice light. “That you don't know what that _thing_ is. I would think you would be quite familiar with that demon. Considering it was the same one that possessed you until a few years ago.”

Ganon was silent.

“A few years ago, yes...coincidentally, that would be about the same time the queen went missing.”

“You think Queen Zelda has been possessed by this thing?”

“Don't you?” Ganon frowned harder, if possible. Impa was only becoming more and more conceited by the minute. Until this moment, she had been speaking to him casually, eyes gazing out the window, hands gesturing at random. Now, she turned to face him, her crimson stare less mischievous and more upset.

“You have been freed at her expense,” she almost spat, every word dripping with bile.

“What did I know?” Ganondorf snapped back. “Did I know Demise's curse would come after her? Don't blame me for this, Impa!”

The Gerudo could see his old companion's chest rise, holding back anger, and then fall in an effort to control herself. She inhaled slowly again, this time burying her face in her hands as she exhaled.

“I'm supposed to protect her!” she hissed. “That spell should not have broken so quickly. If my magic weren't so weak...”

Ganon reached out to her, hesitated, and then gently soothed a hand over her shoulder.

“You did what you could. Perhaps I am at fault in some ways.”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Impa's face suddenly resembled the aging woman she was. “You've been fasting and meditating and controlling every aspect of your behavior for the entirety of your life to keep that monster from taking over you. I'm just...ah!” She threw her hands back. “I'm too old for this!”

After a moment, Ganon spoke again. “How do we get rid of it?”

“Hah! I have no idea. I thought we had gotten rid of it when we took it out of you.”

They stood in silence like that for a moment, Ganon’s hand still on her shoulder.

“Whatever it is, it probably involves the boy.”

“Link?”

“No, him,” Impa said, tilting her chin towards the fallen soldier on the ground. The sarcasm was not appreciated. “Yes, Link, you idiot.”

The being called an idiot was also not appreciated.

“Now that I’ve sufficiently displaced my anger at you, do me a favor and explain what that letter was all about.”

“I thought we already discussed this.”

“No, what was it really about? You don’t show up every day to Hyrule Castle, especially on such short notice, and you’ve always been very considerate of your family. It’s unusual for you to leave them behind.”

“Ah,” Ganondorf started. “Well, I believe the shadow is chasing after me. So I thought I should keep my family away from me. To keep them safe. I chased that monster into the desert after it attacked my family and tried to bait it to me but it disappeared.”

Realization crept through Impa’s face like the morning sun rising above the horizon.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened, so much so, that Ganon feared they would dislodge out of their sockets and he would have to endure Impa’s scolding while he shoved them back in. “Oh,” she said again. “I just realized.” The old Sheikah darted off in a direction that had no significance to the Gerudo. He followed her.

“What?”

“I just realized,” she repeated. “You’re an idiot.”

“You _just_ realized this?”

“No, not that. I already know you’re an idiot. I had the same theory, that the demon was chasing after you, but because you have the same theory and you’re always wrong about everything, I have another theory.”

“And what, pray tell, would that theory be?”

“The demon is chasing after your children, not you.”

*

There were very few things on this blessed earth that could startle Impa.

It was probably notable, then, that she jumped at the sound of the dining hall doors slamming open.

“My son is missing!” Ganondorf announced in such a loud boom that one of the waiters started badly and lost the hold on his tray, sending teacups and hot liquid crashing onto the floor. The Gerudo paid absolutely no mind to all the stricken faces around him and strode towards the Sheikah as if she was somehow responsible for his son missing.

Impa sighed. “Ganon, I'm eating.”

“Goddess forgive me!” He placed a hand over his chest. “Dare I, a lowly desert-dweller, interrupt the royal lunch of Hyrule's regent? Dare I worry about my son?”

“Relax,” she assured, swallowing. “I've already sent someone to look after the boy.”

“Really?” Ganondorf shot at her, disbelieving. “Who?”

“Sheik,” she answered after another swallow.

“Wait a minute,” he said, leaning towards her. “You mean you sent the person possessed by the monster that is hunting him to look after him?”

“Indeed.”

“What's wrong with you?”

Impa shrugged.

A few people gasped as Ganondorf locked his hands around the woman's throat. Someone screamed for help. Impa didn't struggle, but reflexively stood up, coughing out chewed morsels of bread and mutton onto the Gerudo's hands. As such, Ganon was so disgusted, he immediately released his hold over her neck and wiped his hands over Impa's robe.

“It was a joke,” Impa coughed, soothing a hand over her neck.

Ganon shot a string of curse words in his native tongue that only Impa could understand. Some less offensive phrases like, “sick” and “what kind of a joke” as well as a very eloquent sentence about Impa's mother included.

“Will you relax?” the Sheikah snapped, holding up a hand. Seeing the apprehensive faces around her, Impa motioned for all of them to leave. They all obliged, though hesitantly so.

Ganondorf hardly waited for the door to close behind them before he shot at her, “Where is my son?”

“I don’t know!” she shot back, and then hacked out another cough. “And I didn’t send anyone after him. It was a joke. I don’t know where he is. That’s what you get for interrupting my lunch.”

“And that’s what _you_ get for joking about my son’s life.”

Impa, still red and teary-eyed from the stress of near-suffocation, snapped her fingers with about as much spite at she could provide them. A stone appeared above her fingertips, glowing an odd shade of sky blue. It was a fragmented piece from a source much larger, Ganon knew, from stories the Sheikah had recited to him as a child.

“How I communicate with Sheik,” she explained. “Although, that would imply that Sheik says anything of value back.”

“And why, pray tell, did you not think to use this before?”

Impa resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him. She knew Ganon’s temper was impossible to pacify when his “pray tell” came out. Even so, remaining silent would only aggravate him more.

“I did, fool, but Sheik isn’t in the best of states right now—oh, would you look at that?” She craned her head slightly so that she might get a better look into the crystal. “I found your missing son.”

Ganondorf all but shoved her out of the way. “Where?”

Impa had to lift her arm to keep him from knocking the thing out of her reach. Once he had politely backed off, enduring a rightfully-deserved glare from the old woman, she moved the stone towards him so that he might see properly.

“Satisfied?”

The Gerudo only answered by lifting his hand, palm up, about to snap his fingers and cast magic. Impa clasped his hand.

“Uh-uh,” she tutted. “Don’t be a fool. _I_ will get him. You stay put.”

Ganon looked as if he might throttle her again.


	6. In Which Sheik Suffers Indigestion Due to a Poor Decision in Eating Habits

 

Having only ever seen the Spirit Temple in all his life, Link mistakenly assumed this one would be similar at least in some regard.

If the Spirit Temple represented the light and sun of Gerudo Desert, this one represented a darker underbelly. It smelled like rotting corpses and rat feces instead of lavender incense and wet sand. Link had always found the fog of incense to be oppressive and unwelcoming (as did his family, with the exception of his father who loved the stuff and went out of his way to light more) but now, in this temple with the stench of burned flesh catching in his throat, he found himself longing for the suffocating feeling of too much perfume.

“Master, this is known as the Shadow Temple.”

Had it been anyone else, Link might have startled from the outburst, but there was something in the boy that was accustomed to introductions from this being.

“I feel a strong force radiating from the back of this temple. My analysis indicates that this can be none other than the Master Sword. However, please proceed with caution, as I detect another, more sinister presence.”

The only sinister forces Link knew of were that demon possessing the queen and his father’s temper, and he hardly expected the latter to be down here. He proceeded with light feet, sorely regretting having worn sandals instead of closed shoes whenever he stumbled into a puddle.

The temple was dark throughout—not so-much-so that he couldn’t make his way through, but enough that he had to squint or reach his hand out occasionally to make sure he wasn’t about to walk into a wall.

Eventually, after about a few minutes of ambling through the darkness, the halls opened up to some sort of chamber, lighted round the room by torches. At its center stood a pedestal, engraved with a mark Link always saw etched over Hylian armor. From it extended a broadsword, navy blue at its hilt with the same marking glowing dimly yellow.

“Aaaaah, the hero has arrived.”

Slippery and slimy would be two ways to accurately describe this voice.

Link jumped.

As if an extension of the shadows themselves, a man slid out, lithe and thin, the only color apparent on his person a shock of blonde hair and the deep gleam of cherry-red eyes.

“Well, Mister Hero,” he continued. A mask covered the lower half of his face, but it was still apparent by the squint of his eyes that he was smiling. “Remove your sword.”

With that gaze burning on him, it was hard not to obey.

Link wiped his hands over his trousers, and with a few nervous glances at the shadow man, he gripped his fingers around the hilt of the blade. He tugged, gently at first, trying to get a feel of the resistance against the pedestal, and then harder, digging his hips in and up as if lifting something twice his size. But regardless of his effort, the sword would not budge, and the feeling of eyes watching only added to his anxiety.

He stopped.

“Hmm,” the gentleman continued, pacing closer towards the boy. “Strange,” he mused, as if this was some phenomenon that required deep introspection. “Although, perhaps not. My name is Sheik,” he added as an afterthought.

After a pause where Link managed the most judgmental stare in the man’s direction, he continued again.

“The villain is spiritually cleansed and has no desire to fight. The queen is possessed by the demon her endless light should be able to ward off. The hero, son of the villain, cannot even touch his sword, because parts of the demon are inside him. What an amusing turn of events.”

Link wanted to ask something like, “What do you mean parts of the demon are inside of him?” but (aside from the fact that he never spoke to anyone but his family) he was sufficiently distracted by the fact that Sheik was now two inches from his face.

If the young man had noticed Link's startled look, he didn't care. Instead, Sheik placed a bandaged finger at the center of the boy's forehead. “They removed it from your father, but not from you.” Suddenly, Sheik tugged on something Link was quite sure had previously not been there. He tugged, and Link felt as though something with roots deeper than his hair was being torn out of his body.

Eyes watering, Link saw something squirming in Sheik's hand, a black snake writhing like living jelly. It had no face or any semblance of a body, but Link just knew, somehow, that it was very much alive.

Link watched in horror as Sheik protruded his tongue and dropped the wriggling mass down his throat, swallowing it whole.

Instead of displaying some sort of shame or embarrassment for this behavior, Sheik swallowed once more (Link hated to think that it was necessary to do so because that mass was struggling to slither back out; he shuddered) and smiled.

And then Sheik curled forward, bandaged hand jumping to his abdomen.

“That probably wasn’t a good idea,” he said.

 _Really?_ Link wanted to say, but Sheik really did look incredibly unwell, more so than anyone who had consumed food from a questionable source. Sheik continued his slow descent to the ground, as if some invisible force were pushing him there and he was resisting.

He coughed, chewed up oak splattering on the holy steps of the temple.

“Impa’s going to kill me for that.”

Assuming this _thing_ he had just eaten wouldn’t succeed in doing precisely that.

Link tried to remember what his mother did when his sister had regurgitated the same unhealthy substance, but it required magical talent that the Gerudo boy did not possess.

Also, Sheik had just flown into the back wall, which Taqat had _not_ done.

Pinned to the mahogany wall of the temple, Sheik attempted to wriggle free of his invisible chains. A flurry of light and electricity sprung out in eight directions. The Sheikah seemed to be splitting in two, body separated into a distinct light and dark, like the pattern a comb made in the sand.

Sheik arched his back and screamed.

Thoroughly frightened out of his wits, Link could only stare and do nothing.

“Your sword, Master.”

Fi’s voice was a ring of clarity for the boy. He felt not like himself, but something much more ancient and powerful and accustomed to these shenanigans.

Link removed the sword from its pedestal with ease, the stone Fi possessed locking and sealing into its place on the hilt. He felt something humming in the sword, a pacemaker sending signals to quell the thrill in his heart. He had never wielded a proper weapon before, aside from his bow, but somehow, he knew how to use this.

He lifted his arm and readied a slice aimed at Sheik’s chest.

But an unfamiliar hand stopped him. Long and spidery, veins visible through olive brown skin, it was strange. Strange how something so soft and weak could keep him immobile.

“That is not,” the woman possessing this hand said. “How we want to deal with this.” Without waiting for a reply, she snapped bamboo-thin fingers and Link was warped through a familiar (read: horrible) sensation of being teleported across dimensions.

He didn’t notice at first that they had warped, disoriented and blinking haze from his eyes.

But then he saw his father.

“Link!” Leaving the Master Sword behind in the old woman’s grasp, he rushed towards the dark-robed figure of a Gerudo who caught him as he vaulted into his arms.

“Thank the Goddess you’re safe.” Ganon brushed a rough hand through his son’s hair.

Link wafted in the scent of jasmine lingering from his father’s clothes and adjusted his head so that he might rest on his shoulder more easily. It was only after embracing his father that Link realized how cold he had been in the Shadow Temple. After a few moments, Link finally let go and turned back towards the woman who had teleported him here.

Impa, after waiting patiently through their reunion, unfolded her arms and laid the Master Sword across her palms. “This is yours, boy.”

Link glanced once at his father and hesitated to take it. With a gesture of approval from Ganondorf, Link wrapped his fingers around the hilt once more. The same sensation of familiarity buzzed through his hands, a feeling of reunion not unlike that between him and his father.

Ganondorf, knowing his son’s aversion to speaking, asked for him, “What does he need to do with it?”

“Eat it.”

Link wondered if it was Impa who learned her sarcasm from Ganondorf or if it was the other way around. As it was in most cases of Impa speaking, the Gerudo regarded her coldly until she resigned to answering the question properly.

“It’s called the Blade of Evil’s Bane, and like all the previous heroes, you’ll use it to destroy the manifestation of evil in this cycle. Only that manifestation has rid himself of that evil.” Blood-red eyes flickered in the direction of Ganondorf. Link glanced back but said nothing. “And you’ve seen what it is. Now that the portion of Demise’s curse is out of you—that thing Sheik removed—the demon will chase after the last quarter of its soul, which is in your sister. Once Sheik takes that portion, you’ll use the sword to destroy it.”

“So essentially, you want Link to kill Sheik.”

“Indeed.”

This last word echoed along the expansive ceiling of the hall. No one said anything for a while.

“Link,” his father finally began. “You must be exhausted.” That tone of voice accompanying a phrase that really meant, “Link, you probably should not be listening to this.” But Ganondorf wasn’t wrong in this case, and after listening to his father explain where their lodgings were, he obliged him by walking out the hall and out of hearing distance.

“He’s cute,” Impa complimented.

Ganondorf smiled. “I would say the same for yours, if she weren’t responsible for almost killing my son.”

Impa regarded him quizzically for a moment and then burst into an easy laugh. “When you say things like that, I remember why we’re friends. You never fail to surprise me. How did you know?”

“Well, the fact that a demon took the form of the queen. Then this Sheik person is apparently possessed by the same demon. And it is not easy to master the arts of the Sheikah, unless one has some relation to the tribe. The way you treat Queen Zelda…it’s obvious she’s yours.”

The smile over Impa’s face grew wider with mischief.

“You slept with the king, you absolute filth.” Despite the insult, Ganon’s grin was wide.

Impa shrugged in lieu of an answer, but the lack of a witty rebuttal gave her away.

“You’re hiding something,” her friend observed.

“As all Sheikah are.”

“Okay, now I know you’re _really_ hiding something.” After a pause, Ganon continued, “Don’t tell me the late king wasn’t really her father.”

Impa was silent.

Knowing Impa wouldn’t allow him to continue the subject, he instead asked, “You would so willingly allow her to die?”

“The sword will not kill her. I hope.”

“You’ve never been someone to rely on hopefulness.”

“And what shall I do? I didn’t ask her to let that demon take possession of her—And, _yes_ ,” she added with a hiss, seeing the stricken look on her friend’s face. “Did I forget to mention? The curse did not take hold of her of its own volition. For what reason would the curse possess Zelda? It should have taken you or Link or Taqat. She sacrificed herself on the chance that she would have some semblance of control over her mind, for you! For someone she didn’t even know!”

Ganondorf remained silent at this outburst of anger. He remembered his own rage at Impa when he had found out about his son’s disappearance and considered her words. He reached out slowly to see if she would allow a gesture of comfort, as one might tentatively reach out towards a vicious cat that needed petting. She did not lash out at him, he was relieved to find, as he pressed a hand to her shoulder and squeezed.

“She knew me through you, didn’t she?”

Ganon thought he saw the glistening of tears in her eyes.

*

“Baba,” Link greeted and stood as his father entered the room. Impa, knowing that Gerudo became overwhelmed in large spaces, had allotted them one of the smaller rooms to sleep in.  

Ganondorf had never wanted to have this conversation with anyone in his life. Even his wife who knew all the gritty details of his possession had never heard the words out of his mouth.

“You probably need an explanation for all this.”

Link took that as an indication to sit back down.

The room was almost sweltering, unlike any of the other corridors in the castle which were, in contrast, freezing cold. Impa must have assumed that all Gerudo shared Ganon’s abnormal thermostat and warmed the room to mid-afternoon Gerudo Desert temperatures. Link, however, was sweating profusely and took the awkward pause in their conversation to pinch his tunic and waft air through his clothes.

“I’m the reincarnation of an ancient demon,” Ganondorf started.

“That explains a lot.” Link laughed and was rewarded with slap on his arm for his cheek.

“Seriously! This is difficult for me to speak about.”

“Why?”

“Because, you don’t know how hard it was…for me and your mother. “ Ganondorf paused. Link had never seen him speak so gravely about a subject before. “I was marked with this demon the day I was born, and I spent my entire life trying to get rid of it. I wasn’t able to get rid of it for a long time, but a few people—Impa, Hind—helped me subdue it. And through time I was able to prove myself to the tribe, that I wasn’t a stain or a curse. And then you and Taqat were born.”

“And now I’m a stain on the tribe,” Link finished for him. He was given a hair ruffle in return.

“You can’t still believe that?” his father asked. “Even after knowing that you’re the reincarnation of a hero?”

Link slapped his thighs in exasperation. “What does that even mean?”

“Look.” Ganondorf edged closer to his son, wrapping an arm around him and squeezing his shoulder. “In Hylian myth, they believe three goddesses created the earth, its people and its law and order. They left in this world pieces of something called the Triforce, given in three parts to three people who reincarnate every cycle. One with power, one with courage and one with wisdom. The first was given to a demon—that would be me—and the second was given to a hero that might defeat evil—that would be you—and the last was given to a princess, or rather a queen. The queen of Hyrule.”

“But we’re not Hylian,” Link interjected. “What does that have anything to do with us?”

At first Link paid no attention to the flash of light at his side, entirely caught up in the conversation with his father. Until Ganondorf went silent and stared at something behind Link.

“Actually, that would not be the correct rendition of the legend.”

Fi was floating a foot off the floor, the soft light of candles dancing over a glassy face.

“And who might you be?” his father asked, voice soft. It was the most polite Link had ever heard him.

“My name is Fi, sir. In ancient times, I aided the first hero through his quest to defeat Demise. After that, my consciousness was suppressed in the Master Sword, and since then I have not taken this form. It was only through Queen Zelda’s will that I was able to speak freely like this.”

“The queen sent you?”

“In a manner of speaking. She knew the only one who could wield me was too far and isolated to know of his destiny without some assistance. With her under the control of Demise, it was only natural that she find an alternative.”

Link hadn’t even bothered to listen to that last sentence. The word “destiny” was enough to make his heart gallop. Destiny was a word the Gerudo used to force someone into submission.

He didn’t know if the comforting hand his father offered over his shoulder was coincidental or if Ganondorf actually noticed the way his son froze with the utterance of this word.

“Then what would be the proper rendition of the legend, Miss Fi?”

It almost made Link nauseous to hear his father being so formal.

“The Triforce was not originally in three pieces. It is only if an unbalanced individual touches the Triforce that it will split into its rightful bearers, usually these three are the hero, the reincarnation of Hylia and whoever possesses Demise’s soul.”

Link sent a questioning look to his father. Unfortunately, Ganondorf seemed to possess knowledge he had not handed down to his son, and continued to question Fi.

“And if Demise’s soul were removed from its vessel, would there be any way to destroy it?”

“No such instance exists within my memory banks. Though given that the Master Sword has always been the way to destroy the evil in each cycle, it would safe to assume the same even if the soul exists outside of a body, it would still be destroyed.”

“And if one were to possess both Demise’s and Hylia’s soul?”

Given that Fi didn’t have very many facial expressions, it was difficult to tell, but she appeared to be doing the unemotional spirit’s iteration of an eyebrow narrow.

“You’re asking for the Sheikah warrior Impa?” Ganon’s silence conveyed a positive. “She has postulated that the Master Sword will not harm Queen Zelda because she also bears the soul of the goddess Hylia. It is difficult for me to confirm such a theory. Though the Master Sword is said not to harm creatures of light, there are no clear records of what constitutes light and dark, and since there are no previous records of this specific instance, it is difficult to calculate the outcome.”

“So, there is a chance Link will have to kill Zelda?”

“Indeed.”

Link glanced up his father, pleading, as if whether Zelda lived or died was up to his father’s mercy. But despite the way the boy clung to Ganondorf, the Gerudo leader did not budge, did not glance down and give his son a hair ruffle or a smile of assurance. He continued to stare at Fi, who stared back expectantly at him, and Link was left alone with his own thoughts.

*

“Where is Sheik?”

Four quarters of cut emerald floated above her palm, three of them rotating around the gravity of the fourth, a small swirling galaxy counting down the seconds to the inevitable black hole that its center would eventually collapse into.

“Heading towards your daughter.”

“And how do I have your guarantee that he won’t try to kill my daughter like last time?”

“I don’t.”

The chunks of rock decelerated, levitating ever more slowly over her hand.

“Listen, Impa, there isn’t any way to remove that thing from her body? Get it out first and then destroy it?”

They resumed, spurred along by the temper of their mistress.

“You’re not being stupid, are you Impa? Why? Do you want her dead for some reason?”

“I don’t want her dead!”

Stones hissed to a halt.


	7. In Which Zelda Can Finally Take a Nap

She hadn’t told her father about this.

Taqat reached out for the brass candle holder and—mind occupied with a tangled web of anxiety—knocked over oil and melted wick onto her tunic. It seeped a smoky gray into the gold embroidery, spreading even after the girl tutted and threw the dish out of her lap.

Forget the source of light, then. It was still early enough so that dim evening rays cracked through the back wall. Hopefully, prayers till sunset would be satisfactory enough to suppress this demon.

 _Oh_ , she had known about this thing possessing her since Goddess knew when—since she could remember, but ever since that day in the rain and her grandmothers had failed to extract it from her soul, it had remained dormant at the back of her mind. Something she thought about only when the haze of rage clouded her eyes, or when she thrashed and woke in the middle of the night from nightmares. Or when she performed dark magic.

But ever since the ceremony, she could feel its roots dig deeper into her veins, its grip tightening over her vessel walls. This _thing_ , whatever it was, was no longer in its larval stage and had metastasized to the point where her body and it were entwined into one. Inseparable, whether she liked it or not.

She should have told her father.

The longer Taqat had sat at the foot of the Sand Goddess’s image, cross-legged and eyes closed in meditation, the more she had realized that everything that was currently happening to her had all happened to Ganondorf.

A low vibration at the entrance of the temple disrupted her thoughts.

Someone light on their feet, not loud enough to hear, not even loud enough to feel if Taqat hadn’t been so absorbed in mystical energy.

“Oh, _no_ , you’re not like your brother at all.”

Taqat swiveled around and clambered to her feet, unmindful of the kerosene soaking her thighs. The scarf draped over her head slipped to her shoulders.

A man. That was already a bad sign. Men didn’t wander to these parts of the desert unless their hair was red or they were nosy scholars. But the amount of vice and youth in this person meant he could be neither.

Despite the layer of cloth over his face, Taqat could still see his mouth curve into a smile, the kind of malice not even Link’s worst bullies could muster. And his eyes, _Goddess_ , what could be in those eyes for centuries of bloodshed to be flashing in them? She did not waver under his gaze, however, remembering what her parents had taught her.

 _Never let a man intimidate you_ , her mother had said when Taqat had hidden from a Hylian soldier once. She had taken that line to heart.

Though she found that quite difficult given the circumstances.

“It’s entrenched deeper in you.” His voice was a high rasp, not at all like one a mortal might possess. “It might take a little… _more_ to get it out of you.”

He stepped closer. Taqat took a step back.

“What do you want?”

Taqat’s foot caught on the step beside her. She almost stumbled. She took the lapse in her balance to grab a loose chunk of rock off the pillar where her candle had once rested.

“Only to help you,” he finally answered, taking another step towards her.

“Help” sounded an awful lot like “kill”.

Taqat darted towards the entrance of the temple, stone pieces pressed firmly in her hand. The man pursued, obviously much faster than some desert girl who had never chased after anything for more than play, and caught her wrist around thin, deliberate fingers. She tried once to tug out of his hold, but, finding no give in his grip, slammed the rocks into his temple. He fell back, crumpling under the unexpected assault against his face.

The Gerudo lurched forward, all but falling off the steps of the temple entrance. She collapsed, meeting the sand with a soft thud and dust in her nose. Hearing the click of leather against the stone steps, Taqat twisted on her back, sliding back against the sand when she couldn’t bring herself to her feet.

She looked on at the figure with a mix of fear and confusion. What had once been bandages and skin-tight clothing was now a billowing dress adorned with various designs and the crest of the royal family.

“You’re,” Taqat breathed aloud. “The queen of Hyrule.”

Panting, she pushed herself to her feet and ran.

Knowing who this woman was terrified her even more than the sight of a stranger. This was the same person who had almost killed her not even a week ago, and this time, there was no Ganondorf to save her.

“Mama!” she screeched, raw terror and desperation vibrating in her throat. The desert hung on to her scream like mist rising from her lungs.

She felt a weight descend on her—much too heavy to be just this woman’s weight—and turned only enough to fling sand into her face. Taqat tripped again, and, not sparing a moment to stand, crawled towards the adobes lining the horizon, pushing herself to her feet only when she felt she had enough distance between herself and the beast.

Something dark flew past her. Taqat ducked, screaming. She thought it an arrow and continued running only to realize what had landed in front of her was an arm. By the time this dawned on her, she was already trapped in the tight grasp of a dark fist, squeezing her rib cage.

A normal person might have simply died in this case. But Taqat was Ganondorf’s daughter and, as such, had inherited his stubbornness to stay alive. She struggled in the grip of the demon, gasping when her lungs could find release against the pressure.

Something woke up inside Taqat, the creature she had been begging the Goddess to suppress. It tore through her prison with ebon ribbons of its own, ripping the creature’s arms to paper shreds. She landed on the desert floor with a thud, the arms on her back lunging towards the queen.

“No!” Her voice was hardly a note above a whisper, but it was enough for the creature to halt its assault.

A wave of relief washed over the Gerudo. Satisfied that neither she nor the queen were dead, Taqat collapsed, ignoring the pool of blood ebbing through the re-opened wound on her back or the grains of sand that smothered her face.

*

“Mama!”

Ganondorf set his horse into a gallop at the sound of Taqat’s screech. His son behind him shivered. He had been all but rushing home in an attempt to protect his daughter, restraining himself from overexerting the poor animal he rode, but as Taqat’s desperate cry buzzed through the air, he could no longer care about anything else around him.

The creature beneath them broke into full speed, hooves thudding hard against the sand. Link held on tightly to his father, trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of a sword on his back.

They only narrowly dodged a thread of magic hurtling at them. Link could feel the ribbons buzz past his ear like a fly and reflexively curled into his father’s back. If Ganondorf had been even slightly unsettled by this, he made no show of it.

Link clapped his hands over his ears as a screech resounded in the night air.

Something on the horizon swelled, dark and muscular and not entirely well put-together. Ivory tusks matted with yellow, flesh that glowed like hardening lava and eyes wild and rolling with uninhibited rage. It was the beast from Link’s dreams.

It roared deep and booming, and even Ganondorf flinched and altered the course of their mount in a panic.

“Goddess,” he rasped. “Link, you’ll have to defeat that thing.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ganondorf realized this was probably the worst thing he had ever uttered to his son.

But Link, despite the shivers running down his arms, was fueled by the desire to save his sister from whatever cruel fate Ganondorf had narrowly avoided through prayer and discipline. (After all, anything that got his father to pray was probably awful.)

Without waiting for his father’s approval, the Gerudo slipped off their horse and darted towards the dark beast with more courage than he ever thought he had.

“Master.” Fi’s hum was a soothing buzz in his ears. “Upon approaching this demon, I have re-calculated the probability of the host’s survival. Should you pierce her in non-fatal area, Demise’s curse should separate from her body, leaving it vulnerable for another attack.”

The “should” in that sentence was what worried him.

At the foot of the large beast hung the body of the queen, as dark and twisted as Link had seen when she had attacked Taqat. His sister only gave off small sparks of dark magic, which likely meant that all of Demise’s curse was in one place. Which meant he could get a good stab in at the beast.

If he could just find an opening.

Link’s forte wasn’t exactly battling ancient demons. He was currently relying on instinct and what he assumed must have been some withered memory of his past incarnations as a hero to dodge the arms being flung at him. Otherwise, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

Link narrowly avoided another fist hammering down on him. It sent a shockwave that knocked the boy off-balance. He heard his father shout something indiscernible, turned for just a brief moment, then remembered that something was trying to kill him and turned back. Only it was too late to get up and move by then.

He didn’t know why but for some reason, he expected his mother to come and rescue him at some point. When Link opened his eyes, Hind stood in front of him in a half-squat, robes and trousers flapping from the force with which her barrier and the demon’s arm met.

But her magic, as it had proved a few days ago, was still no match for Demise’s curse. With another pounding, the barrier shattered as it had before, and Hind was left on the ground with her son.

“Ganon, no!” she shouted, twisting behind her. Link turned back to his father, who was hurtling towards them with the obvious intention to use magic.

As soon as Ganondorf cast his spell, something in the demon shifted.

From an all-consuming rage that displayed no proclivity for the destruction of one thing or the other, its gaze (and to Link’s horror, the queen’s as well) slid from some vague point of focus to Ganondorf. The two Gerudo were cognizant of this, and there was something in his mother’s eyes behind the raw terror for her husband’s life that flashed with, “I told you so.”

If he weren’t so afraid for Ganondorf, he might have joined in with his mother on the gloating.

Thankfully, Ganon’s barrier held up better than Hind’s and gave him a least a few seconds to register this. As the wall of glowing flower patterns and designs shattered, the boar-like entity separated from Zelda’s body, pools of steam and magma pouring from a volcano. It sprung towards his father.

In that moment, something intrinsic in Link snapped, a mix of his own fear and instinct combined with something much older than him or his father that bound the two together in a web of destiny.

Destiny. Not that word again.

But in the time it took for him to dwell on this fact, he had already jumped to his feet and stabbed the Master Sword through the demon’s throat. Something like blood dribbled down its chest, hissing as it hit the sand, water sizzling in a pan.

“Link,” his mother sighed, regarding him with a mix of relief and shock. His knees buckled, and he allowed himself to collapse into his mother’s arms, sobbing.

“It’s all right,” Hind soothed, pressing a hand to his head.

He felt Ganondorf’s arms wrap protectively around the two of them, still eyeing the demon in case the blow had not sufficed.

Link watched with him, as flakes of black magic peeled off to reveal the same dark matter underneath. The body—or what was left of it, anyway—sounded as if it were twigs snapping over a fire, though the Gerudo saw no flames at its feet. The demon gave a loud roar and a hesitant step towards the family, shaking the earth around them.

But Link’s stab seemed to have been enough, for the demon rumbled in deep voice that seemed to shake the air around them. It sounded similar to the vague recollections of a voice in Link’s nightmares and strangely with a hint of his own father’s voice as well.

“In this life, you may have succeeded, but fear not…there are many more.”

With that, Demise’s curse sizzled into nothingness.

“Where’s Taqat?” Hind asked, choosing to ignore the haunting last words.

Ganondorf, still harrowed, merely tilted his chin in the direction of his daughter. “She’s fine. Just unconscious.”

“Thank the Goddess she’s taken after you.”

Hind pried herself from between Link and Ganondorf and rushed over to her other child.

Across from them, opposite where Taqat lay, was the outline of the queen of Hyrule in the sand. Her body was splayed, chest not visibly rising. What was visible of her skin was deathly pale, and though neither could see from this angle, Link feared her eyes were fixed wide open.

“Is she...” Link breathed. “Dead?”

Ganondorf unwrapped his arms from around his son and slid over towards the queen’s body. Link crawled after him, hoping that it wasn’t the case. To his relief, at least her eyes were shut.

Ganon laid a hand over her carotid. Link watched apprehensively as his fingers twitched up with each second. “No,” he finally answered.

“No,” the previously-thought-to-have-been-dead queen affirmed, eyes flitting open so suddenly that Link started back in fear. She rose to her feet just as swiftly, the two Gerudo awkwardly shuffling to help her.

Zelda opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Ganondorf—nine foot behemoth that he was—swept her up in his arms and squeezed tight.

“You saved my children,” he sighed.

“Yes, yes, it’s all very cute, now please stop touching me.”

Out of respect, Ganon let go. Only now that a giant, hulking Gerudo wasn’t there to keep her on her feet, the queen crumpled to the floor like a wooden doll.

“Ow.”

Thankfully, Zelda was spared the trouble of having to endure the help of the Gerudo tribesman by the arrival of Impa. The old Sheikah came darting towards the queen, cloak parting to show the tattoos inscribed on her bare arms.

“Oh, thank the Goddess,” Zelda sighed to the floor, hand pre-emptively up to keep the Gerudo from touching her again.

“You took long,” Ganondorf grunted, all traces of gratitude vanished.

“Yes, well,” she answered with mild irritation, as if her daughter hadn’t just narrowly escaped death. “I didn’t expect your son to so violently gut that thing like he did. I suppose he takes after you.”

“And a good thing he does.”

But Impa’s next smart remark was cut short by a shaky hand that clasped onto her shoulder. She spared one glance to Zelda and burst into tears so suddenly that Ganondorf started back.

“Oh,” was all Zelda could really say as Impa pressed her face into Zelda’s cheek and sobbed.

“My sweet child!” she cried, kissing every inch of her face. “My heart, my life, the light of my eyes!” she wailed.

As Impa busied herself with her child, Hind crouched over her own. Taqat seemed to be gaining consciousness, attempting to lift what must have been an incredibly heavy head as her mother embraced her.

Ganondorf sighed and ruffled his son’s hair. To the boy’s shock, he was beginning to look incredibly weary and worn, as if he had aged another thirty years in the last few days. Link didn’t know if it had just taken him this long to notice, or if he was looking at his father with an ancient hero’s eyes instead of a child’s.

Link glanced down at the sword in his hand. He didn’t seem to be able to let go, feeling power, courage and wisdom surge through his body. He felt safer, in a way, but in other ways, he didn’t.

“Now if anyone says you aren’t my son,” Ganondorf started. “They can just go and—” His father made an incredibly rude gesture in Gerudo, the kind that Link only heard when his mother wasn’t around.

“I heard that!” Hind snapped, breaking loose from her daughter for a brief moment to give her husband a glare.

*

Link woke up wedged snugly between both his parents. He had half a mind to get up, but then figured it would be too much of a hassle to extract himself from the cloth and blankets and arms tangled around him. He inclined his head towards his mother, who slept softly beside him, coils of red hair plastered against her face, pillow damp with sweat. Link had woken up once in the middle of the night as his mother shuffled to check on Taqat. He could only imagine how many more times she had done so while he slept.

Ganondorf, on the other hand, hadn’t even budged from his comfortable position on the bed. Unusual, considering the injuries Taqat had suffered. His father was known to sit awake through nights when his children ran fevers or bruised themselves badly, so for him to sleep soundlessly while Hind ran up and down the room to check on their daughter…Link chalked it up to a mixture of exhaustion and relief that the curse haunting him all these years had finally been eradicated.

Taqat lay curled up on the other side of the room, the bed next to hers occupied by the equally unfortunate queen of Hyrule, with an equally distraught mother who had been hovering over her all night. Impa had apparently been unable to resist the pangs of sleep and was currently sprawled over a chair.

Trapped between his parents, Link twisted onto his back and spent most of the morning watching a cockroach crawl along the ceiling. He vaguely wondered how his father would react if he woke up to a cockroach scurrying over his face.

The Goddess must have derived some sick amusement from this thought, for no sooner had Link wondered it did the insect fall from its place on the ceiling right onto Ganondorf. His father stirred in his sleep, rousing only when Link tugged earnestly on his sleeve.

“What?” his father grumbled. Immediately after uttering this question, Ganondorf realized exactly what was inspecting his face for food crumbs and sat up, shocked. “Goddess!” he exclaimed with absolutely no consideration for the others sleeping in the room. He smacked the bug away.

Link rolled over on his side, snorting and giggling into his sheets, hushing only when Impa started awake in her chair.

She let out a slurred groan and threw the nearest book at him.

Ganondorf ignored this assault on his person and wrapped his covers back over him. At this point, however, everyone had been woken up by Ganondorf’s outburst and there was hardly any point in trying to go back to sleep.

“I thought you Gerudo were disciplined and all,” Impa croaked, eyes squinting. “Shouldn’t you be up by now, torturing some poor innocent Hylian?”

“So you say,” Ganondorf grumbled back. “I thought Sheikah were the ones who woke up early and tormented people.”

“I had a bad day yesterday.”

“ _You_ had a bad day,” Taqat snapped, to everyone’s surprise.

“Good point,” Impa conceded.

“Goddess,” Hind pulled the blankets down from over her face. “I’m going to go do something useful.” Hind slipped out of their bed and went somewhere to do precisely that. Link shifted away from his father, untangling himself from the sheets.

“What do you Gerudo have for breakfast?” Impa asked after a while, propping herself up on the chair.

“The flesh of Hylians,” Ganondorf answered curtly.

“Ew,” his daughter remarked.

Despite all this noise, Zelda hadn’t stirred one bit. Link thought she might have slept so deeply for the same reason his father hadn’t budged in his sleep last night.

Ganondorf, observing the same thing as his son, asked, “Is she dead?”

“Goddess, Ganondorf!” Hind had returned with a large dish and a scolding. “What’s wrong with you?” The sweet aroma of spices Link was too sleepy to identify filled his nostrils. He took the scent in, crawling from his bed towards his mother.

“Come all of you and eat breakfast,” his mother called (not that she needed to). “Sadi and Nabooru are incredibly generous and gave us some food this morning.”

“They’re back together?” Ganondorf asked, pulling himself out of the covers.

Hind waited until her husband was closer before smacking his arm with the ladle.

“Since when do you care about local gossip?”

*

The Master Sword suddenly felt heavy in his grip.

Link rapped a knuckle on the gemstone at its hilt. He tried to pry it out with his fingers first, as if it were a particularly stubborn walnut refusing to budge out of its shell, but found that it was sealed tightly, probably with magic. He tried again with a chisel, stabbing the corners to loosen the crystal.

“Master, what are you doing?”

He continued, digging the beveled edge under the stone.

“If you intend to free me in some way, please discontinue your efforts. My consciousness will fade until the next hero appears. Until that time, it would be best for you to place the Master Sword back into its pedestal.”

Link tapped the stone with the blunt of the chisel to see if his maneuvering had done anything.

“Master Link,” Fi tried again.

Apparently the boy did possess some inkling of magical talent, for the jewel fell out of place and into his palm. He presented the crystal to the sword spirit and grinned.

“Are you saying you want me to stay with you this time, Master?”

Link nodded.

*

Link and his family members were beginning to worry about the queen. She hadn’t roused at all despite all the noise everyone had been making. It wasn’t until long after everyone had settled for lunch that anyone noticed the covers stirring.

“Zelda?” Impa asked. She had requested everyone stay out of the room to keep from overwhelming the woman, which naturally meant that everyone had ignored her and crowded around the entrance to watch.

The most un-ladylike sound escaped from the sheets.

“And I thought you were lazy,” Ganondorf snorted to his son. Link could only squint back at him in reply.

A head popped out from under the woolen blanket. “I feel as though I could sleep for millennium,” the queen rasped.

“You can do that later,” Impa said, tearing the sheets from her. Zelda reflexively curled into a ball.

Zelda moaned, covering her face with a loose sleeve. Impa ignored her protests and picked her up, as if she were as light and inanimate as a laundry basket. The queen huddled closer, as if a kitten blindly seeking warmth.

“You’re leaving?” Hind asked. “But it’s almost dark. You should stay for dinner.”

“How dare anyone refuse Gerudo hospitality,” Ganondorf added graciously.

“Believe me, I’d love to indulge, but we’ve already been missing for long enough. I’m going to magick her home anyway. Excuse me,” she added to Taqat, who was apparently absorbed in Zelda’s face and hadn’t noticed that she was blocking the way.

“Oh, sorry.” Link, noticing the shade of red his sister was turning, placed his chin in his hand and gave her a mischievous grin.

“Shut up,” Taqat snapped, smacking him and turning even redder.

“Taqat, don’t hit your brother.”

Taqat stuck her tongue out while her father wasn’t looking.

Still, Link couldn’t really blame her. Despite how worn the queen looked, she did have an air of beauty to her, though the Gerudo wasn’t sure if it was inherent in her or a learned behavior from years of practicing grace.

“Good job, Link,” she said, reaching out and patting his head as Impa walked by him. Link blinked with each tap, not sure how to respond to being praised like a dog.

“Oh, yes,” Ganon added, shifting through his pockets. “All this drama made me forget.” He presented a lump of jewels and coins to the Sheikah. “Your soldiers’ money.”

“Ah, I was wondering when…my soldiers have been complaining this time because I never reimbursed them for what was stolen. Thank you.”

Zelda, though her eyes were heavy with exhaustion, still managed questioning looks between the two of them.

“They only steal because they find sick amusement in torturing the soldiers,” Impa explained. “Not to keep the profits. He sends the money back to me after a few days, after assessing what’s inside. He makes sure all the soldiers are paid well. I slacked off once on their salaries, and Ganon chided me for it.”

“How cute,” Zelda said, clearly more interested in sleep than Ganondorf’s positive qualities.

Impa stood apprehensively at the doorway for a moment.

“I imagine it’s difficult to say good-bye when…well,” Impa mused.

“You should visit more often,” Taqat burst out. Zelda smiled at her. She recoiled from the queen’s attention, blushing again.

“We’ll try,” the Hylian promised.

Impa and Ganondorf stared at each other for a moment. Partings between them had never been this awkward.

“Are we free, then?” Ganon asked, voicing a question that had been drifting in the back of his mind ever since all this had ended. “Even in the next life?”

“Who knows? But for now, we have this one to enjoy.”

“Indeed,” Zelda sighed from Impa's arms. “Your tribe is most welcome in my kingdom. And I know Impa gets a kick out of gossip, but I will be sure to dispel any rumors that bother you.”

“That would be lovely.”

“And well,” Zelda went on. “I’m sure thank you doesn’t really cut it, but thank you.”

Ganondorf smiled. “Any time.” His face fell into a frown after realizing what he had just said. “Actually, no, please don’t drag me through this again.”

Zelda laughed despite herself.

Link watched Impa’s lean figure stalk into the desert, a good few paces away from the Gerudo settlement, and magick away in glowing shades of indigos and purples. All that was left behind was the sand and the hot, arid waves radiating into the air.

 _The desert radiates unrelenting heat, a hostile environment,_ he remembered a Hylian visitor say once. _How can you survive in such a place?_ Link had remained silent as he always did, but the idea of his home being called hostile had never crossed his mind before. But now, reveling in the evening breeze and the sight of oranges and yellows reflecting off the desert sand, Link couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever call his home anything but welcoming. Anything but warm.

This was his home, after all.

*

Link collapsed onto the mattress and sighed. He thought it a perfectly good opportunity for a late afternoon nap only to have it ruined by his entire family making themselves comfortable on a bed that was only meant to accommodate himself and his sister.

“Fork over the pillow or you die,” Taqat demanded, faking a knife in her hand. Her intimidation tactic was foiled by a fit of coughs that left a streak of blood on the aforementioned pillow. “Oops.”

“Taqat, I just changed the sheets,” Ganondorf snapped. He was taking up most of the bed to everyone’s displeasure.

“Boo-hoo, Baba, if it weren’t for your weird curse I wouldn’t be in this state in the first place.”

“Taqat!” her mother snapped. Link could see the raw nerves all over Ganon’s face from that comment.

“Sorry, but it’s true. And are we ever going to get an explanation for this?”

Hind and Ganondorf exchanged glances and after a moment finally answered, “I suppose it’s time for a bedtime story.”

“Finally!” Taqat exclaimed, collapsing on her back next to Link. “After sixteen years of fighting, we have finally won, brother!”

“I’ve actually heard all this already,” Link answered.

“No!” Taqat cried, shutting her eyes and letting her head loll to the side. “Traitor!”

“Taqat, why are you so dramatic?” her father asked.

“Yeah, I wonder where she gets that from,” Hind replied to her husband, eyebrows narrowed.

“Anyway, Link,” Ganondorf went on, ignoring the scrutinizing gaze of his wife. “You haven’t heard everything. I think we’ve already told you about how we met, but we never told you of all those times we spent trying to remove the curse.”

“All the _good_ times,” Hind added in a particularly mischievous voice, raising an eyebrow at her husband.

“Now who’s making inappropriate remarks in front of our children?”

“Baba, calm down, we’re adults. We know what sex is.”

Link, like the proper adult he was, giggled at the mention of coitus. Seeing his father’s frown, Link bit his lip and hushed himself. He decided to fiddle with his tunic while his family argued over other inconsequential topics and then remembered the jewel he had left in his pocket.

“Link, you…” Ganondorf interrupted himself at the glow in Link’s hands. “Where’s the Master Sword?”

Link shrugged.

Ganondorf opened his mouth—probably to chide his son—but was cut short as the glow formed into Fi, swelling and forming another person now squeezed onto this tiny bed. The result was his father being shoved off the bed.

“Ha, ha,” Taqat said. “Also, what is that?”

Link didn’t know if sword spirits could feel comfortable, but she did look incredibly like it over the siblings’ mattress.

“My name is Fi, miss. I was sent by the Goddess Hylia to aid the first hero during the Sky Era.”

“Yeah, okay.”

In the time Taqat spent staring at Fi in disbelief, Ganondorf resumed his rightful position on the bed. He looked ready to ignore his family’s conversation and go right to sleep until another person draped their body over him.

“Ma!” he screeched, attempting to elbow Kotake off of him. “You’re heavy!”

“Hmph,” she snorted in return. “And you weren’t heavy every time you decided to collapse on me?”

“Ma, I was eight!”

Link turned back to his sister and Fi, who were now engaged in an argument over history. He decided it was better to turn back and stare at the ceiling. It was only after staring for a good few moments at the sand-colored roof over their heads that Link realized exactly how exhausted he was. His eyelids drooped shut, the sound of his family laughing and arguing and teasing each other soothing him to sleep.


End file.
